This year I’ve put most of my gardening budget into a professional garden design, so I’m in retail shutdown and can’t buy any new plants – at all. But I’ve discovered there are plenty other signs of my garden obsession in my behaviour, even with plant-buying taken out of the equation. Any of this sound familiar?

Tick tock, sun by the clock: I know precisely when each area of the garden gets sun, especially in nooks that see just an hour or two of direct light. This makes me very boring, but it also makes it easier to plan where to put seats, especially for winter sun.

In my dreams: Dreams or nightmares about the garden are a regular thing for me. Whether it’s a chat with Alan Titchmarsh or a late frost that killed the hellebores, they’re always unlikely and always feel utterly real.

Count plants, not sheep: If I want to distract myself – at the dentist, when swimming laps, or when trying to drop off to sleep – I recite an A-Z alphabet of plants (*has a realisation about the cause of #3 above*).

Weather geek: I worry about and watch the forecasts for killing frosts, heavy snow and gales in a way I never did before the garden drew me in. I’m constantly amazed at the plants’ drive to grow, flower and set seed, regardless of the weather.

Love the Latin: I now love and want to learn more Latin plant names, a transformation from my first impression of botanical nomenclature as a needlessly pretentious quirk of gardening. The folksy common names are interesting, but you can’t beat the precise, no-room-for-confusion Latin.

Stand and stare: Standing outside – or, more usually, looking out a window – I may stay motionless for many minutes, imagining small or big changes I could make to the space. It looks like an absent seizure, but it’s just the gardening obsession.

Not great company: Because gardening has taken over eleven-tenths of my brain and this is tedious for people around me, I strain to keep gardening out of conversation. But like any hobbyist, my obsession is how I make sense of the world. Or, more precisely, it is my mental release valve: the vocabulary, beauty and order of it are a great comfort to me. I do try to muster some small talk about holiday plans or current events, but really I’m just waiting for someone to talk about tulips.

These are my people: Meeting another garden-obsessive is as good as it gets. The conversation doesn’t just flow, it pours – about everything from holiday plans (for our seedlings) to current events (Chelsea). We need some way to recognise each other faster, like the brooches the masons used to wear.

Forever young: Surprises in the garden give me a regular supply of Christmas-morning wonder. The first snowdrop, germinating seeds, baby newts, self-seeded plants – all these first-time-discovery moments make me feel small, safe and sure that everything in the world is well.

Are you garden-obsessed? How can you tell? I’d like to hear about it.

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Janet, I’m glad I’m not there to see the wind – am visiting my mom and sister in New Hampshire and going to my college reunion in Massachusetts this week. I’ve seen the tweets though about the wind and have everything crossed for my garden back home. When I return I’ll need to do some serious family time and don’t think I’ll get to Gardening Scotland; it’s also a bit beyond my nonexistent budget this year! But I’ve got some fab plants there in past; an astrantia roma, a tradescantia and a rhodo ‘purple splendour’ that are 3 of the best things in my garden.

How funny. I think I’m more obsessed by knitting than I am by gardening, but the garden comes a close second. (Actually, I garden in two gardens – my own and the church garden, and my own suffers as a result…) I always joke with my downstairs neighbour that my garden is the most photographed in Britain. Yes, I have more pictures of my garden than of my children!

thanks Christine; my friend is a huge fan of knitting, and I have encouraged her to write a blog about it. my obsession is probably the only reason I started the blog; there was so much gardening in my head I needed to put it somewhere. I think I’ve become (marginally) less boring to my family since the blog has become my outlet.

Sheila, This very definitely resonated for me. I think one of the benefits of blogging is that I can share my gardening obsession with a virtual community of garden obsessives instead of boring my not-so-long-suffering non-gardening friends and relatives!

Yes!! That’s me to a T currently. My husband thinks plants are an addiction. I am not into the latin, but i do exhaustively research all the Plants i do not own, shark around the garden centers regularly, drive winding paths home to spot something cool planted in eye popping ways and then i imagine them in my landscape. My beds are crammed full and i am eyeing the back of the lawn for a new bed to “paint” in. Luckily my mother and best friend love gardening and they let me come over and work on their gardens. I’ve got a young child who loves to garden and play in the yard thankfully.

Thanks Sarah – it’s funny that you should leave a comment on this post, as I was thinking about it only today, wondering if I should do another post about the fact that worried – really worried now – about the extent to which I’m thinking about the garden! But maybe that is just a function of it being January, the most awful month for gardeners with itchy fingers.

I love obsessions – how else to get through the boredom of a shopping queue, or a late train, and please dont get me started on the swimming lengths.
One of my obsessions at the moment is how I am going to fit all my annuals in. I have three types of cosmos, four of sweetpeas, cleome nasturtiums, not to mention marigolds and all the veg. What was I thinking of?
I spend all my free time in a logistical nightmare – if I just move that I could perhaps squeeze that in….

Your site is hilarious and boy can I relate. Sometimes i just stare out at our windows for what seems like forever to hubbie, just imagining new ideas and things I want to add to the garden. I had a full day of gardening last week and I was in heaven. Re: the dreams, I had a nightmare that all of my plants and flowers were burned and I woke up practically hyperventilating, so happy that it wasn’t true! Gardening is one of the most rewarding hobbies I could ever imagine! Love your blog 🙂

Thanks Heidi — I have had exactly the same kind of dreams. Sometimes in my dreams I’m wondering about with a seedling I just dug up from the garden and I can’t find a pot to put it in. What are we like?! it’s so good to know I’m not alone, and wonderful to hear from another addict, thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment!

Oh dear it appears I’ve got a problem by the sound of it. When I think back I started this obsession when I was around 12 years old when my dad gave me a corner of his garden do my own thing in. Is there a cure ? Or do I keep plugging away happily ?

I like the idea of brooches, but I do tend to look out for dirty fingernails and already met a few fellow gardeners this way! I realised the other afternoon at work that the grooves in my hands were still full of beautiful black dirt even after 10 minutes of scrubbing after my gardening that morning. Funny enough, instead of wanting to clean them, I loved how they reminded me of what still needed to be done that evening so I found myself glancing at them all day at work and daydreaming about the garden.

It’s not all good though – when my husband came home after 2 weeks away and saw that I dug out a lot more of the lawn for planting, all he said was ‘why?!’. Poor thing – it’s good to know there are more ‘obsessed’ people out there!

You forgot to mention the fact obsessed gardeners have email addresses with flowers or gardening inspired! Also that we name our children, pets after our favorites! That’s obsessed! BTW my daughter laughed when I read her this column and said “Mom that’s SO you!”

I have suddenly grown a green thumb…..I had a completely ignored my balcony garden in the last 10 yrs I’ve been married…All of a sudden I seem to be so excited about propagation and pruning and repotting and buying new plants and memorizing ther names…I even have urges of stealing plant cutting from my neighborhood..this morning while walking up the stairs to my house I’m thinking maybe I should start putting pots on my neighbor’s bald balcony and do him a favor….What has happened to me?!!

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